SOURCE: "The New Yorker: Early Days," in The Clocks of Columbus: The Literary Career of James Thurber, Atheneum, 1972, pp. 90-112.

Holmes was an American critic and educator. In the following excerpt, he discusses James Thurber's early years at the New Yorker.

Joining The New Yorker in March of 1927 was the turning point in [James] Thurber's career, and perhaps in that of the magazine as well. He was thirty-two years old (older than most of the New Yorker staffers), a frustrated writer and wandering journalist who had not yet found himself or a place where he could do what he wanted to do. The magazine was in the process of developing from a doubtful experiment into an established reality, and Thurber brought to it the versatility and the kind of comic talent it was looking for. The New Yorker gave him the chance he needed to practice his craft...